A Wolf in the Fold

“Maybe your wife wants the ears to hang over the mantel. Trophies of the time you hired a Regulator and made a damn fool out of him by cheating him and sending him skulking away with his tail between his legs.”

“I don’t much like your tone,” Tyler said. “And I’ll thank you not to speak ill of my wife. She is the salt of the earth, my Mildred. It was her brainstorm to hire you in the first place.”

I was flabbergasted. He had lied all along. He and the missus had planned the whole thing, including their swindle of me. I gave him one last chance, though. Folks say I don’t have a shred of decency in me, but they don’t have to put up with the nitwits I have to put up with. Like the Tylers. “Please. I’m asking you nicely. Give me my money and I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Haven’t you been listening? Five hundred is all you are going to get.” He wagged the Winchester. “Were I you, I’d light a shuck while I still can.”

“Do you have any sprouts?”

Tyler cocked his head as if he was not quite sure he had heard the question right. “Do you mean children? No, we don’t.” Then he added, lowering the rifle an inch or so, “Not for a lack of trying. We’ve been to the doc and tried a few patent medicines, but nothing seems to work.” He paused. “Why did you want to know, anyway?”

“Because I don’t shoot kids.” I snapped my left wrist out and down and the derringer slid into my palm as neatly as you please. The shot wasn’t that loud. He stood there a full thirty seconds before it occurred to his brain that his forehead had a hole in it. Buckling at the knees, he sprawled at my feet.

I swung down and was across the porch in a twinkling. Sure enough, Mildred had been listening just inside. When I yanked the door open, she recoiled in horror with a hand to her throat.

“You shot him!”

“I damn sure did.” I held out my left hand. “The rest of the thousand, lady, and you can bury him come morning.” I admit her red hair got to me, the way it shimmered so; otherwise I would not have been so charitable.

Mildred sputtered and made sounds that reminded me of the time I strangled a cat. Then she poked a finger at my chest and lit into me in female fury. “I’ll see you hang! The whole countryside will be after you! Find a hole and crawl into it, but it won’t help. Your days are numbered!”

“The money, lady.” I was losing my patience.

Mildred made the mistake of glancing at the ceiling. Then she poked me again and said, “All I have to do is holler and our hands will rush to my aid.”

The bunkhouse was a hundred yards or more from the main house. Odds were, the cowpokes had not heard the derringer, but a woman’s scream was something else. “Are you going to give me what’s due me or not?”

Mildred drew herself up to her full height. “You can go to hell, sir.”

“Damned contrary critters.” I jammed the derringer against her chest about where her heart should be, and shot her. She collapsed in a tidy heap without another sound. Eventually folks would tie the dead rustlers to me and me to the Tylers, and the newspapers would brand me as vicious and vile, as they always did, and demand that something be done about the notorious Lucius Stark. They had been demanding it for quite a spell, but so far no one had been able to oblige them.

I went up the stairs three at a bound. The bedroom was directly over the parlor. I looked in the jewelry box and the closet and opened every drawer but did not find the money. I tried under the bed and in the pillowcases and under the mattress and was about to give up when I noticed a pair of boots between the night table and the bed. Her boots, not his, boots so new, I doubted she’d ever worn them. I shook each and upended the second and out tumbled a roll. Evidently the Tylers did not trust banks and Mildred had not trusted Bryce to hold on to their savings. I stopped counting at four thousand, rolled the money back up, and slid the roll into my pocket. It made a nice bulge.

Mildred was still alive. As I stepped over her she stirred and moaned, so I placed my boot on her throat until she was still.

About to climb on Brisco, I heard a sound from the direction of the bunkhouse. A lamp had been hit and figures were spilling outside.

“Mr. Tyler?” a cowboy called out. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” I answered, reining Brisco around.

“It doesn’t sound like you!”

“I have a cold.” I gigged Brisco. Shouts broke out. By the time the cowboys reached the main house I was safely shrouded in darkness. Some of the lunkheads began shooting at the sound of the hoofbeats, and some of their slugs came uncomfortably close. Bending low over the saddle, I lashed Brisco into a gallop.

All in all, it hadn’t been a bad night. The job got done, I got paid, and the son of a bitch and his conniving wife who intended to cheat me got their due.